


To Saunter Vaguely Downwards

by pentipus



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: AU, Angel!Merlin, Angels, Banter, Demons, London, M/M, Murder, Porn, References to Suicide, Tea, The Savoy, Violence, angel!Eggsy Unwin, bible stuff, demon!Harry Hart - Freeform, moral quandaries, references to domestic abuse, self-indulgence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-04-12 11:23:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4477430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentipus/pseuds/pentipus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“London,” Arthur had said. “There’s an angel there, very easy mark. I’ll expect you back in a month.”</p><p>Harry had nodded, knowing beyond a doubt that Arthur knew Harry had no intention of returning within a month. Let Them wait, Harry thought as he drew his great wings about him. Let Them wait for their boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Eggsy stood back against the wood clad wall of the empty warehouse, shuffled as far away from Harry as he could get. Harry twisted his fingers into the dark hair of the dead man tied to the chair in front of him, pulling his head back to stare into his wet gaping mouth.

“Harry,” Eggsy said quietly. “You’ve fucked it, mate. You’ve really fucked it this time.”

Harry looked over his shoulder, his eyes meeting Eggsy’s, and suddenly felt his own great age, the years stretched out between them; decades, centuries, eons. The things Harry had seen, the things he had done, spread out before him, flung into the chasm of time that separated them. 

“Well, now They know,” Harry said, letting the man’s head fall forward, limp against his bloodstained chest. “There’s nothing that can be done now.”

Eggsy looked at the ground and nodded, keeping his head down as Harry walked across the concrete floor towards him. Harry put his bloodied hands on Eggsy’s face, pulling until Eggsy was looking at him. “No matter what happens, I will never let Them take you. Do you understand?” Eggsy tried to look away but Harry held him still. “Do you understand, Eggsy?”

 

It had been thousands of years and yet Harry still felt a desperate thrill every time he came up for air. Time was relative down Below, every second stretched to an age. Sometimes he came up and hundreds of years had passed, sometimes it was just a few days, the time difference muddying his thoughts for a moment before he composed himself.

London was by far his favourite place to work; he had travelled all over the world but there was something about the warm beating heart of London that seemed overwhelmingly comforting to him. He assumed it was the fact that it contrasted so drastically to the world Below, its warm walls enveloping him, its tight streets like pulsing arteries, the white brick buildings of Kensington and Marylebone and Belgravia looming above him like old friends.

“London,” Arthur had said. “There’s an angel there, very easy mark. I’ll expect you back in a month.”

Harry had nodded, knowing beyond a doubt that Arthur knew Harry had no intention of returning within a month. Let Them wait, Harry thought as he drew his great wings about him. Let Them wait for their boy.

 

The mark was a young man called Eggsy Unwin, a murder victim fresh from the other side, sent back for sacrificing himself to save his mother and sister from an abusive stepfather. Despite his gallantry in death the boy _was_ an easy mark; arrested for theft, arson, GBH, in and out of detention centres for much of his young life. He missed his chance to go to Hell by the skin of his teeth, Arthur had said. Ten more years and he would have fallen like a house of cards.

Harry spent his first day back on earth sat on a bench in Gladstone Park, watching Eggsy as he stalked the street that ran alongside it, eyes trained on the house where his family now lived, trying to catch a glimpse of them through the windows as he walked by. Eventually Eggsy settled himself down on the low wall that ran around the edge of the park, his feet turned inwards, resting on the sides of his trainers, his knees splayed wide and his hands clasped in front of him. He looked up at the house with a frown and waited.

Harry lit a cigarette, the flame from his gold lighter flickering in the breeze.

 

Harry watched Eggsy a lot in that first week; waiting outside his mother’s house, sipping a lonely pint in a dingy local in Battersea, wandering aimlessly around the Tesco Express in Dulwich, feeding birds in the park. Sometimes he did things that Harry had come to expect from angels, placing a calming invisible hand against the cheek of a young woman that was crying alone in the middle of a playing field, tugging at the back of a little boy’s sweater as he stumbled forward into the road, car horns blazing as they narrowly missed him. Sometimes Eggsy let the humans see him, pressing a tenner into the hands of a homeless man, helping a lady with a buggy onto the bus, stopping to help a little girl who had fallen off her bike. All of those inane little moments that helped the wretched creatures struggle through their endless days.

He was a good lad, Harry found himself thinking. That was how They chose who they were going send back after all, pick out the decent ones that would have been good anyway, send them back and claim all the miracles for themselves. It was dishonest really, Harry thought. The exploitation of a good soul. Despite what his track record said about him, Eggsy Unwin would have been good either way, wings or no.

Harry tried not to think of this as he walked towards him down Tooting High Street one day, slipping his wallet out of his pocket and dropping it on the ground a few yards ahead of Eggsy. Harry could hear Eggsy’s shouts as he turned a corner, slipping away unseen, “Oi mate!”

He watched silently from the dark space between this world and his own, his sharp eyes on Eggsy as he jogged around the corner, looking back and forth for the man who had dropped the wallet. Harry watched as Eggsy frowned and opened the wallet, revealing a few hundred pounds in cash and a photo ID.

Harry had learned that the best way to trap a mark was to let them come to you. Let them think they have control and they are far more likely to relinquish it.

 

Harry opened the front door to his house a day later and looked down at Eggsy, his face a picture of perfectly composed confusion. “May I help you?” Harry asked.

“Er, yeah, I think so,” Eggsy reached into his back pocket and held out Harry’s lost wallet. “You dropped this down Tooting High Street yesterday.”

Harry looked down at the wallet then looked back up at Eggsy’s impassive face, huffing out a laugh. “Well I never,” he said, holding out a hand and taking the wallet, flipping open the leather halves to reveal the thick wad of cash. “You have no idea how much hassle you’ve just saved me.”

Angels were just too easy, Harry thought as Eggsy smiled back, wide and honest.

Harry _insisted_ that Eggsy let him take him for a celebratory drink at the bar around the corner, a Victorian pub with a wooden floor and a long, low bar, called The Hereford Arms. Eggsy’s faux-Burberry hat and Adidas jacket looked incredibly out of place as he wound his way through groups of men in fine, bespoke suits and women clutching Prada handbags.

“What’s it race day or something?” Eggsy asked as they finally reached the bar, his hands closing over the gold rail that ran along its length.

Harry chuckled, “It is actually, didn’t you know?”

“That explains the three-hundred quid then,” he said, grinning in a way that was all too devilish to be fully angelic.

“I fancied my chances,” Harry said in reply. And then, with a sideways look at Eggsy, “You counted it then?”

Eggsy looked slightly sheepish for a moment before shrugging, “Just curious I guess.” Harry ordered two pints of Guinness as Eggsy continued, “You ain’t placing a bet then?”

“Well, it’s a little late for that now,” Harry said, nodding at the barman as he placed their drinks on the bar in front of them. “Maybe you saved me from a big loss.”

“You saved yourself, mate,” Eggsy said, picking up his pint and taking a sip. “You’re the one that dropped it.”

 

Harry followed Eggsy that night, after they had finished their Guinness and gone their separate ways. He wandered silently through the boroughs of South London, following Eggsy into the grey brutalist housing estates of Southwark. He watched as he wound his way through the buildings, looking for something in particular or nothing at all, Harry wasn’t sure.

Eventually Eggsy came upon a group of men who were attacking a homeless man in a deserted underpass, a brown pit bull-cross lying dead or dying in the entrance. The guttering light illuminating the blood on its fur.

Harry could tell that Eggsy was visible to the men, he knew from the way his body carried more weight, how it seemed more solid. Whether Eggsy had intended for the men to see him or had simply forgotten to remain unseen, it was clear that six men were more than Eggsy would be able to fight on his own.

Harry let him take a few heavy punches before he stepped into the light of the underpass, his black Oxfords shining against the grey concrete. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” Harry said into the silence that fell upon the group as they turned to look at him. He saw Eggsy looking up from where he was hunched on the ground, blood from under his hair dripping past his lips, one eye already swollen closed. “Is there a problem here?” Harry asked pleasantly.

One of the men turned slowly towards him, a bloodied butterfly knife in his hand. Harry straightened the collar of his white shirt and stepped forwards with the confidence of a man who stood beside the Devil.

The man lunged forward and Harry got blood on his suit as he knocked the knife out of the man’s hand, plunging it into his shoulder and pushing him face-first into the ground. He pulled the knife from the man’s flesh with a sickly sucking sound and stood up, holding the knife at his side, letting the dark blood drip to the floor. He turned to the homeless man that was cowering bloodied on the ground and said quietly, “You can go.”

The man shot a look at the body of his dog, lying motionless in the mouth of the underpass, before scrambling to his feet and limping away as fast as he was able to.

Harry opened his mouth to suggest that it might be time for the other men to leave as well, but found that they were already moving towards him. He smiled, flipping the butterfly knife between his fingers as he stepped forward to meet them.

It was all too easy, as it always was with humans, although Harry was careful not to kill any of them in front of Eggsy. He left the men unconscious on the ground, dispatching them one by one with a cheerful vivacity that was probably quite unbecoming for someone who was meant to be a shadow upon the earth.

“What the fuck?” Eggsy said from where he was still crouched on the ground, staring open-mouthed at the carnage before him. “What the _fuck_ , Harry?”

Harry slowly drew his shoulders up, letting a puff of air escape from between his lips. “I thought you might need assistance,” he said finally, stepping forward and holding out a hand to help Eggsy to his feet.

Harry could literally pinpoint the moment when Eggsy realised what Harry was, his slack mouth tightening, his eyes narrowing, suddenly dark.

“They told us about you lot,” Eggsy said as he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, looking down at his own drying blood.

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean.”

“You're from down Below, innit," Eggsy was almost smiling, apparently feeling quite proud of himself. "You lot come up here causing trouble for us, fucking with the humans, _tempting_ them.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Harry said, looking away.

Eggsy spread his hands out in front of him, gesturing towards the six unconscious bodies on the floor. “Trouble,” he said, raising his eyebrows.

Harry opened his mouth, then closed it. “Well you’ve got me there I suppose,” he said at last.


	2. Chapter 2

Harry stands by and watches Eggsy bury the homeless man’s dead dog in Southwark Park, laid to rest in a shallow grave among the roses of Ada Salter.

“So why’re you following me around then?” Eggsy said, settling himself down on one of the wooden benches that faced towards the park’s pond, although it was still too dark to really see anything.

“I’m not _following you around_ ,” Harry said, staring at the spot where Eggsy had patted the earth down over the dog’s heavy body. “You came to me, if you recall.”

Eggsy scoffed, “You expect me to believe that was a coincidence? The only angel in London finds the only demon in London? By chance? Come off it.”

Harry took a seat next to Eggsy, crossing his legs. “All part of God’s great plan, perhaps?”

Eggsy just stared at him, incredulous, dried blood in lines down the side of his face.

“Well you’ve never met a demon before so how would you know?” Harry said.

“I seen Devil’s Advocate,” Eggsy said with a smile as Harry laughed, running a hand over his face. “Anyway, you didn’t answer my question,” Eggsy continued. “Why are you following me around?”

Harry looked at Eggsy for a moment, debating whether to just tell the truth and be done with it, move onto the next mark and chalk this up to experience. But Harry wasn’t one to give up so easily, so instead he said, “Well, I’m not sure. I suppose- I suppose perhaps I was lonely.”

“ _When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it_ ,” Eggsy said automatically.

“Someone’s done their homework,” Harry said, rolling his eyes.

“It’s mandatory,” Eggsy said simply.

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“Well,” Eggsy crossed his arms, staring out across the glassy surface of the pond, which was slowly turning blue as the dark night hurried away. “You want me to believe you’re just up here, lonely? Looking for a friend?”

“It’s not as though I can meet any _humans_ with shared interests.”

“And you reckon an _angel_ would have shared interests with you?”

“Look, Eggsy,” Harry said. “I’m sorry if this has all been a bit of a misunderstanding. I saw that you were alone and thought that we might be able to-”

“Hang out?” Eggsy provided, his tone disbelieving.

Harry said nothing.

“I don’t reckon that’s what I’m meant to be doing down here,” Eggsy continued. “Listen, thanks for helping me out tonight and all that, but like, I think I should be getting on by myself.”

Harry nodded. “Of course, Eggsy,” he said, uncrossing his legs and placing his hands on his knees as he pushed himself up. He ran his hands down the front of his suit and looked back at Eggsy, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a white business card with ‘Harry Hart’ embossed along its centre. “Take my card at the very least,” he said. “Just in case.”

Eggsy reached out slowly, taking the card with a nod. “Alright,” he said. “Cheers, Harry.”

 

A spark of violence was a glorious thing.

Harry had seen it in Eggsy’s eyes as he’d watched Harry lay waste to the men in the underpass, a flash of bloodlust that Harry could recognise at a thousand paces. That was his in, of course, Eggsy had violence under his skin, murder victims always did. The fury, the resentment, the sadness; the boy would fall without a doubt, crumbling under the weight of Harry’s wickedness.

Three days after Harry left Eggsy in Southwark Park, the sun rising over the tower blocks to the east, his phone rang, an unidentified number flashing up on the screen. Harry stared at it, letting it ring on. Let him wait, Harry thought to himself. Let him commit to it.

“Hello?” he said when he finally answered.

“Alright?” came Eggsy’s voice on the other end of the line. “Er, it’s Eggsy.”

“Eggsy,” Harry said, pretending to be surprised. “How are you?”

“Yeah, I’m alright, cheers, y’know.” There was a pause that Harry was meant to fill, but he stayed silent, interested to hear what Eggsy would say if he let the silence stretch out between them. “Listen,” he said at last. “I wondered if you wanted to go get a pint or something.”

“Feeling lonely?”

Harry could almost _hear_ Eggsy rolling his eyes with exasperation as he spoke, “No, Harry, I just. I was. Look, do you wanna get a pint or not?”

“Alright, Eggsy,” Harry said with a smile. “Your place or mine?”

 

They met again in The Hereford Arms, although it was far quieter than the first time they had been there, just a few quiet couples drinking coffee by the bright windows, the bar man greeting them with a nod of his head.

“Two pints of Guinness please, sir-” Harry said as he approached the bar, two fingers held in the air. Victory, of course.

“Er, no, that’s alright,” Eggsy said, stepping forward. “Pint of Stella for me please, mate.”

“I should have known,” Harry said, smiling as Eggsy flipped him off.

They sat in a booth at the back of the bar, the leather backed benches stylishly worn to a soft, dusty brown. Eggsy sipped his pint as though he were determined not to stay for a second one, sat perched on the edge of his bench with the demeanour of a man who was suffering from a moral quandary.

Harry was very pleased.

“So were you ever a person here? A human, I mean?” Eggsy asked, his elbows on the dark wooden table between them.

“No, I wasn’t,” Harry said. “I was an angel actually. One of the first.”

Eggsy’s eyes grew wide for a moment before dropping to his pint. “So you-”

“I fell, yes,” Harry said with a nod. “They try to tell you that falling is an unspeakable calamity, but it’s actually quite painless. Falling is the easiest thing to do in the world.”

Eggsy stuck out his bottom lip, considering, before saying, “So if you were one of the first, you must know Merlin?”

Harry scoffed. “Yes, I know Merlin _very_ well.” _The tiresome puritan_ , was left unsaid.

Eggsy grinned. “Yeah? What’s he like when he’s not on the clock?”

“I’m afraid Merlin is always on the clock,” Harry took a gulp of his Guinness, staring gruffly across the bar. “Even when he isn't.”

“So,” Eggsy paused. “So. Demons and angels can be friends then? I mean, they talk and stuff?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘friends’. Merlin and I have a particular kinship, I suppose, but that’s really only down to the fact that we’ve known each other for so long.”

“Did he know you before?”

“Before?”

“Before you fell,” Eggsy looked almost embarrassed, as though ‘falling’ was too personal a subject to bring up over a pint in Harry’s local.

“He did, yes,” Harry said quietly.

Eggsy nodded and took a long gulp of his Stella, his white throat working. “I’ve done some bad things too, you know,” he said after a while, spreading his hands out on the table. “I was surprised when They like, y’know, gave me the wings and that.”

“I imagine you looked quite a sight,” Harry said nonchalantly, thinking of all the bad things Eggsy may have done, thinking of the bad things Eggsy might do if he were tempted.

Eggsy nodded. “They are _way_ more heavy than I thought they’d be.”

“I know.”

Eggsy cocked an eyebrow. “Ay?”

“I know,” Harry said again. “I have some.”

“What, like big bat wings?”

Harry laughed, “Similar.”

“Do you have the pitchfork and the tail too?”

“Not quite.”

“Pfft,” Eggsy crossed his arms.

“Well, do you have a halo and a harp?” Harry said.

Eggsy grinned. “I can probably rustle one up if that’s what you’re into.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Harry kept his voice steady but he could feel the conversation shifting, twisted by his dark air, the mere immoral presence of him pulling at the base chinks left in Eggsy’s white armour. They never could fully cleanse the humans, he thought. There was always something a little dirty left behind.

“What _are_ you into?” Eggsy pressed.

“Excuse me?” Harry let his voice darken just a shade, barely perceptible but there all the same.

Eggsy blinked, vulnerable for a split second, before sitting back and letting the moment slip by unmentioned. “Y’know, what stuff do you like?” he said, his tone light. “You been around for donkey’s years, must have some pretty varied tastes.”

Harry paused. _Too push or not to push_.

“Haribo,” he said finally with a sly grin. “A guilty pleasure.”


	3. Chapter 3

Harry learned that Eggsy liked movies, he liked old movies and new movies, he liked action movies from the 90s and could recite _Under Siege_ word-for-word. Harry learned that Eggsy used to dream in movies too, dreams with a soundtrack and a voiceover and credits at the end. Harry learned that Eggsy liked to talk, he liked tea with no sugar, and that he learned to drive when he was twelve. Harry learned that Eggsy put himself between his mother and the man that killed him, and that he died of multiple stab wounds to his chest and neck. Harry learned that his murderer was held in Dartmoor Prison, and that Eggsy was very, _very_ angry.

Eggsy was always slightly uneasy when they first started spending time together, clearly concerned that he was doing something wrong, something unnatural. They would walk through the streets of London and talk about the people they saw there, the lives they were leading. Harry would stand by and watch Eggsy carry out his little miracles, making sure to trip someone up or pickpocket someone’s phone to balance the scale. After all, maintaining the balance was what he was there for.

Merlin reminded Harry of this when they met in The Savoy just before Christmas. Harry had been wandering around London with Eggsy for almost six months by that point, a fact that Merlin worried like a dog with a bone.

“What I don’t understand, Harry, is why you’re dragging this out,” Merlin said, hands steepled on the table. “We know that if you wanted him, you could take him. So why not just take him?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Merlin, it’s a complicated process, I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“The devil’s in the details, I suppose?” Merlin looked infuriatingly pleased with himself at that, so Harry just ignored him, turning his head away and taking a sip of his hot tea.

Occasionally Harry would feel an almost overwhelming hatred as he looked at Merlin, a revulsion driven into him by thousands of years of history. Sometimes he looked at Merlin and wanted to burn away his soft flesh, pick apart the bones underneath and see what was so holy inside there, see what was so different to himself.

Merlin levelled Harry with a withering look, eyebrows raised, mouth drawn into an unamused line. “Are you having an episode?” he said.

Harry narrowed his eyes, the sudden flare of his rage like a cloudburst, there and gone in an instant. “I’ll thank you not to refer to seven thousand years of con-”

“Conditioning, yes,” Merlin said, rolling his eyes. “I know, Harry.”

“You really are tiresome, Merlin.”

“Well, thank goodness we only have to see each other on special occasions,” he said with a smile, lifting his tea cup to toast in Harry’s direction.

“Hm,” Harry said, uncrossing his legs and standing, brushing down the front of his blue pinstripe suit with the backs of his hands. “Merry Christmas, by the way.”

Merlin inclined his head in thanks. “Spending it with your boy, are you?”

“Good bye, Merlin.”

“May the Lord be with you,” Merlin said with a smile.

“And Lucifer with you.”

As Harry walked away from the table he made sure to sour the milk in Merlin’s tea. It was the little victories that were the most satisfying.

 

Harry didn’t spend Christmas with Eggsy, he spent it wandering around finding single occupancy homes and placing too many pills and ropes and razors in view. He spent it pushing one too many pints into the hands of violent men, helping them find their way home to their shaking wives.

Eggsy no doubt spent Christmas pulling people off of overpasses and hiding knives, making sure that the drunks found police cars instead of their homes.

Harry thought of this as he sat, invisible, next to an elderly man watching the Eastenders Christmas Special, his eyes flicking to the gun on the table in front of him. He found he wanted to find Eggsy, wanted to shake him and make him see that helping these people was useless. In most cases they didn’t even want help, they _wanted_ to suffer. They loved the pain as much as Harry did; he’d never been a human and yet he felt closer to them than any angel could ever hope to be.

Someone was crying on the television, screaming in the snow-covered square.

“It never snows that much in London,” Harry said to himself. “Ridiculous.”

He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and looked apologetically at the man next to him, completely oblivious as Harry pulled it out and answered, “Hello, Eggsy.”

“Alright? What you up to?”

“I’m watching Eastenders.”

“Depressing,” Eggsy said with a disgusted tone. “Wanna do something?”

 “What did you have a mind?”

There was a pause, a _vulnerable_ one, Harry could tell.

“I was gonna go visit my family,” Eggsy said, almost shy. “I wondered if you wanted to come along.”

“Well,” Harry considered, looking between the gun on the table and the old man sat next to him, silent tears running down his face. “Christmas is a busy night for me, I’m sure you understand-”

“Oh sure,” Eggsy interrupted. “No, that’s cool, that’s- Yeah, no worries.”

“But, I’m sure I can take an hour?”

“If you reckon you can?” Eggsy’s voice was lighter instantly. Of course, it was his first Christmas alone, Harry realised. The boy was lonely.

“Of course, Eggsy,” Harry said. “I’d love to.”

Harry looked at the old man and thought of Eggsy, alone just the same, sad just the same. It was pathetic, he decided. It was pitiable.

As Harry left the old man’s house he made sure that the gun would misfire, purely due to the fact that he didn’t want to miss seeing a wall being painted with brain matter. Obviously.


	4. Chapter 4

They didn’t go to see Eggsy’s family, or even to the house where his family now lived. Harry had imagined lurking invisibly in the corner of Eggsy’s mother’s living room like Scrooge watching his nephew on Christmas day.

Instead Eggsy walked them through North London until they reached Alexandra Road Estate, walking quietly along the curve of the railway tracks.

“Well,” Harry said, looking about at the stark slabs of concrete that made up the houses there. “This is festive.”

Eggsy snorted. “This was my home, you wanna watch what you say, bruv.”

Harry wanted to challenge him, _Or what, Eggsy? Or what?_ But he stayed silent, walking at Eggsy’s side like a bodyguard.

They climbed the grey steps up through the dreary levels of the concrete structure, passing struggling Christmas lights and flat plastic depictions of Santa in his sleigh. Eggsy walked them up to the apartment where he used to live and then entered without a word. Not really phasing through, just entering, one moment he was without, the next he was within.

Harry walked silently through the dark house, which was now clearly inhabited by some other unfortunate souls. It was the kind of place that Arthur would have been delighted with, a dismal shell that broke the spirit. The dank walls smelled of damp and the worn carpet was covered in stains, a limp sofa stood against one wall, facing a dusty television set.

“Here-” Eggsy started, his voice suddenly loud in the darkness. “Here’s where-”

Harry nodded. “Right here?”

“No,” Eggsy pointed towards one of the doors that led off of the main room. “It was in there, that was my room.”

Harry stepped around Eggsy, pushing at the white door and stepping into the room, now filled with the apparel of a little girl. A pink bedspread lay rumbled on the little bed, the walls covered in pictures of Lego characters and superheroes and the bright title posters of Disney movies. Eggsy slowly followed him through, his feet shuffling on the dirty floor.

He walked over to a low wooden desk that sat under the window, reaching out and picking up a little blue globe that showed the positions of the constellations; Canis Major, Canis Minor, Lepus, Lupus.

“That night-” Eggsy broke off, rolling the little globe between his fingers. “That last night, when Dean- I mean. I don’t know if he ever meant to kill me, or if he’d meant to go as far as he did. It’s one of them things, innit. I just wish that I could speak to them again, just to tell them not to be too sad about it.” Harry felt a well of something in the pit of his stomach, the sucking swirl of pity somewhere behind his navel as Eggsy placed the little globe back on the desk, spinning it once and watching it with dark eyes. “I wish I’d fucking killed him,” he said, suddenly angry. Harry could see furious tears welling in his eyes. “I wish I could kill him now, just be damned and drag him down there with me.”

That was normally the moment when Harry would place a heavy hand on his mark’s shoulder, whisper something comforting, something validating in their ear. _Let’s go then, you and me._ But instead he just clenched his jaw, as seven-thousand years of conditioning pounded in his ears: _Fucking take him_. _Now’s the time._

Eggsy looked away, rolling his knuckles into his eyes and sniffing. “M’sorry, Harry,” he said. “I’m being an idiot.”

 _TAKE HIM_.

Harry reached out, placing his hand in the space between Eggsy’s shoulder and his neck, his thumb pressed into the back of Eggsy’s ear, his fingertips spread against the hard bumps of his spine. “Eggsy,” he said, black heart hammering in his chest as Eggsy turned into the touch, pressing his closed mouth against the palm of Harry’s hand. Not quite a kiss, just the warm touch of skin.

Then Eggsy was reaching forward, across the space between them, the toes of his shoes knocking the toys of some strange little girl out of the way as pulled himself up to kiss Harry, mouth open and warm.

“Sorry, Harry,” he said again, against Harry’s lips. “I’m sorry.”

Harry said nothing, just wrapped his arms around Eggsy as he kissed him. _Desperate_ , he thought to himself. _Pathetic_. He groaned, furious, into Eggsy’s mouth, angry at himself and angry at Eggsy, angry at everyone Above and everyone Below. He felt dizzy, fraught with want as Eggsy pressed against him, hands fisted in the material of Harry’s jacket.

“Fuck, Harry,” Eggsy breathed, his cheeks wet with tears. “Harry, please.”

Harry knew with every fibre of his being that the job was as good as done; Eggsy was compromised, he was weak. Harry need only take his hand and lead him astray.

“What do you want?” Harry said, pulling away. He lifted his hand and pressed his fingers over Eggsy’s mouth, jaw clenching as Eggsy just breathed through them. “Tell me what you want to do, Eggsy.”

_I want to kill the fucker that did this to me, I want to fucking destroy him._

“Just-” Eggsy screwed his eyes shut, his mouth curling as his voice wavered. “Take me back to your place, Harry. Just take me the fuck away from here.”

Harry nodded. “Come on then,” he said.

 

As soon as Harry had closed the front door of his house Eggsy was pressing him back against the cold wall of the hallway, stretching up to kiss him again, his anger turning to hunger.

Harry let himself be crowded back against the little framed pictures he had cultivated over the years, an etching from 1622 here, a miniature still life from 1769 there, his reproduction of Rossignol’s leviathan fresco hung above his head like an exclamation point. Eggsy’s open fly scraped Harry’s skin when he slipped his hand into the front of his jeans, Eggsy’s head tipping forwards, screwing into the base of Harry’s neck. He was so quiet that Harry found himself stilling every now and again to check he was ok, eventually wrapping a big hand around the front of Eggsy’s throat and tilted his face up, pressing his mouth to the apple of Eggsy’s cheek as he slowly jerked him off.

When Eggsy let out a strangled whine Harry sighed, shuddering back against the crowded wall. And when Eggsy quietly breathed, “Harry,” through gritted teeth like a warning, Harry cursed under his breath.

Eggsy came with a sob, mouth open, his throat flushed red and bared before the devil.

“Fuck,” Eggsy said. “God.”

Harry laughed, low and sad. “Careful.”

Eggsy let out a ragged little chuckle, head tipping forward again to press against Harry’s collar. “God,” he said again.

 

Harry stared at the swirl of hair at Eggsy’s crown for a long time as they lay bunched together in the middle of Harry's big bed, imagining his glowing halo there. Eventually he took a breath and said, “Do you know who I am, Eggsy?”

Eggsy shrugged against him. “Harry from Kensington?”

“I am one of Lucifer’s oldest and most trusted servants,” Harry said evenly. “I’ve existed for over seven thousand years. I predate the printing press, the papyrus, and the abacus. Lucifer sent me to collect the souls of Attila the Hun, Elizabeth Bathory and Talat Pasha. Humans have been naming me for centuries, thinking they were naming the Devil; the Venom of God, the Lord of the Flies, the Destroyer.” He paused, letting his eyes slide closed until he felt Eggsy shifting against him.

“I’m Eggsy,” he said, propping himself up on one elbow and offering a hand. “Some people call me Gary, and one time I won a hundred and fifty quid on a fruit machine down The Albion in Bethnal Green. Nice to meet you.”

Harry rolled his eyes, pulling Eggsy back down against his chest, his white shirt rumbled between them. “You are tedious sometimes.”

“So,” Eggsy said, ignoring him. “What was Bathory like?”

Harry shrugged. “Rather polite, given the circumstances.”

“Do you get to like, hang out with rock stars and stuff?”

“I met Jimmy Page in a bar in Soho once?”

Eggsy scoffed. “Clever.”

“I do try.”

“You shouldn’t have to try at seven thousand years old.”

“Well, some things come easier than others.”

“I bet.”

“Mind your manners,” Harry said, a grin in his voice.

Eggsy was quiet then, curling and uncurling his fist against the white cotton covering Harry’s stomach. “So,” he said eventually. “What happens now?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know why you guys are up here, y’know, you demons,” Eggsy said, his voice sounding as though he thought the words were foolish. “You’re up here to tempt us. Well, us and the humans.” Harry nodded but said nothing. “And here I am in your bed, so.”

“So?”

“Well, I guess I failed the test.”

How ironic, Harry thought. Eggsy thinking _he’s_ the one that’s fallen.

“If you knew what I was doing, why did you let yourself be tricked into it?” Harry asked, gripping Eggsy’s arm a little tighter when it felt like he was going to try and move away.

“I wasn’t tricked,” Eggsy said. “I wanted to.”

“Wanted to what?”

“Be here,” he said. “With you.”

Harry clenched his teeth together, furious with himself.

“I have some time,” Harry said at last. “I have a little time to organise things. You’re a good lad, Eggsy, I don’t want to damn you for all eternity if I can help it.”

“Since when did demons have consciences?”

“It happens to the best of us,” Harry drawled.

“I thought you were the best of them?”

 “Well, like I said,” Harry said with a smile.


	5. Chapter 5

Harry was technically incapable of loving anyone or anything, his sole purpose was to walk the earth and destroy. His veins pumped fire through his body, a thick molten magma of rage bubbled constantly under the surface as flies ate their way through his innards. He was a sucking cancer, pulling the air from the earth, filling the rivers with tar, crushing the creatures of the earth beneath his polished Oxfords.

And yet.

And yet when Eggsy looked up at him, his hands fisted in the lapels of his jacket, open and desperate the way only angels get, Harry felt the darkness in him wither, the decay cut away piece by aching piece.

“Harry,” Eggsy pleaded. “You got this, yeah?”

Harry would grit his teeth and nod, sliding his hands into the short hair at the back of Eggsy’s neck, shifting minutely to feel the heavy press of Eggsy’s cock against his hip. “Yes, Eggsy. I have it.”

 

They sent a messenger after two months, a well-to-do looking young lad named Charlie, square-jawed and smug.

“Arthur’s wondering what the holdup is,” he said to Harry as they walked together through Regent’s Park, a tide of bright humans parting wordlessly before them.

“The mark is delicate, if I push too hard I’ll lose him,” Harry said, already furious that Arthur had sent _this_ arrogant little shit to come and check up on him, of all the demons he could have picked.

“Well, I think Arthur’s concerned that you’re wasting time,” Charlie said.

Harry stopped walking, eyebrows raised as Charlie rounded on him. “You _think_ Arthur’s concerned?”

“Yes, well,” Charlie shrugged. “He didn’t say that in so many words-”

Harry stepped forward, his fist curling into the front of Charlie’s jacket, his foot coming around to trip him as he pushed him backwards. Charlie’s hands flew up to Harry’s shoulders but he pulled them back a moment later as though burned.

“Now you listen to me,” Harry hissed, leaning over Charlie where he held him up with his heavy hands. “Your job is to bring a message, you keep your fucking opinions to yourself. Do you understand?”

“Harry-”

“Do you have any idea who I am?” Harry said slowly, allowing the sky to darken around them, the sounds of people and cars and birds reduced to a single high tinnitus buzz that grew thunderous and heavy around them. Smoke was rising from the front of Charlie’s suit, a black hole burning slowly where Harry twisted his hot fists.

“Yes, of course, Mr. Hart-”

Harry pushed him away, letting him fall back onto the ground. “Then fuck off back down Below and tell them that I’m working, I don’t need distractions.”

 

“They’re growing suspicious,” Harry said that evening as he stalked the streets with Eggsy. “They sent a messenger up to speak with me today.”

They were looking for a house in Surbiton, a little further out than Harry would normally like to go, but Eggsy assured him that there was a woman there who was suffering and that he needed to go and help her, which was what Harry would describe as ‘standard Eggsy procedure’ by that point. They had taken the train for a change, Eggsy spending the twenty-five minute trip from Waterloo telling Harry about the time he stole a car and drove it backwards through a mile and a half of busy London streets before being caught.

“I can see why you were confused when They gave you your wings,” Harry had said with a smile. Eggsy had just grinned up at him, winking hammily.

“What did the messenger have to say then?” Eggsy asked, turning down a wide suburban road lined with trees.

“He asked me what was taking so long.”

“And?”

“I told him to mind his own business.”

“I bet he took that well.”

“He took it surprisingly well actually,” Harry said, thinking of Charlie’s wretched fearful face below him.

Eggsy looked at him with a knowing grin. “Did you break out the old ‘encroaching darkness’ trick?”

Harry chuckled. “I may have.”

“Classic move, Harry,” Eggsy said, shaking his head slightly. “Classic move.”

 

When Eggsy had described his needy woman in Surbiton Harry had envisioned a prim housewife, a black eye hidden with expensive concealer, little shards of porcelain plates swept up under the refrigerator. Instead they came to a bedraggled looking property, set among a seemingly endless row of crisp white dolls houses.

“Are we saving her from Kim and Aggie?” Harry said, surveying the filthy exterior of the house, the garden littered with broken, forgotten things.

“From the what?” Eggsy said, grimacing back at him.

“From the cleaners, you know,” Harry waved his hand vaguely, then rolled his eyes as Eggsy just continued to stare at him, mouth open on one side. “Nevermind.”

“I think you keep forgetting I’m not seven-thousand years old, Harry,” Eggsy said as he stepped over a twisted bicycle frame and made his way towards the front door of the house.

Harry sighed as he followed him, muttering, “It was _this_ century, Eggsy.”

 

Inside they found more of the same; piles of broken electrical appliances, newspapers that were so old they were growing black mould, empty bottles and yoghurt pots and biscuit packets in little eddies on the dirty floor.

Harry wanted to makes some sarcastic comment, something cruel that would make Eggsy bite, but instead he silently followed him through the house, watching his shoulders as he edged his way through the towers of refuse to wherever his senses told him he should be.

They found a dead woman in a child’s bed at the back of the house, her body was hard and cold, but Harry could tell she had only gone that evening, perhaps while they were on the train from Waterloo.

“Is this who you were looking for?” Harry asked quietly.

Eggsy stared at the woman’s body for a moment and shook his head. “No,” he said, turning away. “She was dead before we left. There’s someone else.”

Harry shook his head. “There’s no one else here, Eggsy. I would know.”

Eggsy looked around at the piles of rubbish, his eyes flicking back and forth. “It’s her daughter.”

“There is no one else in this building-”

“No,” Eggsy interrupted. “I have to contact her daughter, I have to let her know her mum’s died.”

Harry started to roll his eyes but stopped halfway, clenching his jaw. “We came all the way to bloody Surbiton to make a phone call? We’re practically in Surrey for god’s sake. _Surrey_ , Eggsy.”

“There's things here that the daughter needs to get rid of before they find the mum’s body. She needs to know first, before anyone else.”

“What things?”

Eggsy reached out and ran his hands over a pile of dusty books. “It’s the dad,” he said with a small, sad grin. “The mum killed the dad and the evidence is here. The daughter needs to get here to get the evidence out before they come and clear the house.”

Harry scoffed. “Well that’s mighty bloody angelic of you, helping to cover up a murder? Yes, full points, Eggsy, you’re doing a wonderful job.”

“Nah, mate,” Eggsy said, suddenly serious, turning slowly towards Harry. “He was like Dean, I can- I can see it, I can see the things he did, he- The mum killed the dad to protect the daughter, built up all this shit around herself to hide the evidence, to give the daughter a reason to stay away. She done it all for her.” He paused, squinting as though he were under a spotlight. "I can  _see_ it, Harry."

Harry watched Eggsy silently, letting him feel his way through the molasses of the human memories that were caught up in the walls of that decrepit building. He watched as Eggsy ran his fingers through the thick dust that coated the windowsill, the bed frame, the desk piled high with unwashed clothes. He watched as Eggsy pressed an unwavering hand to the breast of the dead woman, warm over her cold heart.

“I was gonna ask if you was here for the murder,” Eggsy said eventually, still staring at the woman’s body. “But then I realised that this was a good killing, a murder for a decent reason, and that wouldn't've been a demon's job.”

Harry sucked at the inside of his lip. “Do you think your superiors would consider this a _good killing_?”

Eggsy shrugged. “I dunno anymore, Harry. I dunno what’s good anymore.”

 

Harry stood by as Eggsy searched the house for the phone number of the dead woman’s daughter, watching as he dialled the number on the woman’s own phone and left a bizarre message in a voice Harry assumed was meant to belong to the woman that was currently decaying in the back room.

“I can’t breathe,” Eggsy had said, rasping. “Please. _Please_.”

Afterwards they cleared the sofa together, Eggsy throwing old soft toys and odd shoes across the room while Harry carefully piled a number of soiled blankets and cushions in a pile at his feet. They sat together and shared a bottle of gin that Eggsy had pulled from the wreckage of the woman’s kitchen, grimy tumblers filled to the brim.

“She hit him on the head with a toaster, like, a four-slice toaster, a big one,” Eggsy said, as though he were remembering a story he had been told. “And he fell down, but he was getting up again, so she hit him again, then she hit him with a bottle and the bottle smashed.”

“Sloppy,” Harry said, taking a sip of his gin and grimacing.

“She stabbed him with the bottle, the broken neck of it. But he was still getting up,” Eggsy pointed to a spot to the left of the sofa, in front of the door that led into the hallway. “It was there, the blood’s still there under the boxes.”

“So how’d she finish him off?” Harry asked.

“She walked with a cane, with a metal tip.”

Harry snorted. “Very nice. A good killing indeed.”

Eggsy was silent, staring down at his gin as he slopped it up the sides of his dirty glass.

Harry tilted his head back against the filthy cushions of the sofa, keeping his eyes on Eggsy. “Do you know, I don’t think I’ve ever met a genuinely good person,” he said. “Even angels have their bad moments.” He thought that Eggsy might scoff, but instead he kept his eyes down, as though he were searching for something.

“You should just take me,” he said at last, looking up. “Stop all this bullshit.”

“Eggsy, I won’t let Them take you,” Harry said quietly.

“You’re just one man though, against all of Hell?”

Harry smiled, slow and wicked. “You forget, Eggsy, I am not a man at all.”


	6. Chapter 6

They finished off the bottle of gin as they waited in the dead woman’s house in Surbiton. Eggsy had just unearthed a second bottle when the woman’s daughter appeared at the front door, clearly desperate but oddly hushed. A woman who knew how to keep a secret, Harry had said as they watched her stalking round the house, whispering her mother’s name through the little gaps in the windows.

There was a sickly part of Harry that very much wanted to wait and see what happened when she found her mother’s hard dead body, but Eggsy insisted that they leave.

“It ain’t right to leech off her misery, Harry,” he said as they made their way back to the train station, Eggsy wavering slightly under the streetlights.

“I’ve always found it to be quite enjoyable,” Harry replied, reaching out to grip Eggsy’s elbow as his white trainer slipped off the curb.

“Shit,” Eggsy said, then smiled. “I didn’t really think I could get drunk.”

“It’s possible if you want to,” Harry said.

“You didn’t want to then?”

“I felt I should be the responsible adult.”

Eggsy laughed, got his hand up and under Harry’s suit jacket and dug his fingers into the hard muscle above Harry’s hip. “I want you to be drunk, Harry,” Eggsy said, leaning up. “I reckon you’d be a right laugh after a skinful.”

Harry let Eggsy kiss him under the light of a streetlamp, yellow in the darkness, his hands on Eggsy’s back. He registered the kiss as yet another moment that he let slip by, another instance where he could have taken Eggsy and be done with it. Instead Harry pushed his fingers into the hair at the back of Eggsy’s scalp, holding him tight as he started to fidget.

“You wanna take me home or what?” Eggsy said, grinning.

 

The next messenger They sent was a slim man in a crisp suit, grey pinstripe falling precisely over polished brown Brogues. He followed Harry around Fulham for over an hour, until Harry stopped dead in the street and beckoned him over.

“You’d make an appalling spy,” Harry said as he slipped his hands into the pockets of his suit trousers.

“Yes, well,” the man said huffily, “It’s not exactly my forte.”

“Clearly.”

“I’m more of a behind the scenes man usually.”

Harry looked the man up and down, he wouldn’t have looked out of place in an accounting firm; Harry couldn’t imagine him roaming around Hell with his black wings wrapped about him.

“So,” Harry said. “I assume you’re here to tell me to get a move on with my mark?”

The man made a face. “Not in so many words,” he paused and then smiled wryly. “But yes.”

“Tell me, would Arthur feel better if I sent back a report?” Harry said it almost as a joke but the man made a contemplative face and nodded slowly.

“I’m sure he would value some input on the situation, yes,” he said.

“Very well,” Harry said, surprised. He stepped forward and clapped a hand on the man’s shoulder and smiled, tilting his face down to catch his eyes. “Please tell Arthur that he will have a full report before the week is out. You can tell him that I was no match for your bargaining skills.”

“Well,” the man said. “I wouldn’t like to lie.”

Harry smiled. “Arthur would be disappointed if you didn’t.”

 

That night Eggsy was desperate for him, pulling him about in a way that would normally annoy him, but instead he let himself be pulled, let himself be pushed.

Apparently Eggsy had been too late to an attack in Holloway, he’d stumbled silent and invisible into a house near the college there, just as a young man had died of a stab wound, bled out like a burst pipe.  Eggsy described the blood, how the floor had been sodden with it, and Harry had tried to ignore his own cock as it hardened uncomfortably against the tight folds of his trousers.

They never fucked, but when Eggsy had had a bad day he would ask for it. Begging prettily beneath him or on his knees, breathing hard through his mouth, struggling to hold back the noises that welled up inside him when Harry lay his unholy hands upon him.

“Are you gonna fuck me, Harry?” Eggsy said heavily that night, his body a hard weight in Harry’s lap. “When are you gonna fuck me?”

Harry shushed him, shaking his head. “Not tonight, Eggsy, not after that.”

Eggsy grunted, sliding awkwardly out of Harry’s lap and down onto his knees. He rocked back onto his heels and opened his mouth, his pink tongue out flat against his bottom lip, waiting for whatever Harry wanted to give him.


	7. Chapter 7

Harry and Merlin had decided to meet in a greasy spoon near Lambeth underground station, the kind that has plastic chairs and melamine mugs, a dirty black and white checkerboard floor and styrofoam cups of coffee for a pound.

Harry knew that Merlin loved the greasy spoons in a way that he could never love places like _The Savoy_. _Decadence is for the Devil_ , Merlin would say. _There’s something pure about the honesty of poverty._ At which point Harry would normally roll his eyes and say that perhaps Merlin just liked to get a little dirty and that he should just come right out and admit it.

Today Merlin sat down across from Harry with a look on his face that was positively dismal, despite the slant of sunlight from the grubby window that bisected his clean suit; a bright, knife’s edge line of light that ran from crown to belly. Merlin was one of the oldest angels Harry knew, one of the first. He had solemnly presided over war and famine, disease and genocide; he was unshakeable. And yet here he was, his eyes narrowed to dangerous glinting points as he stared across the table.

“Merlin,” Harry said as Merlin ordered a tea from the waitress who hurried by. “How the devil are you?”

“Take a guess, Harry.”

Harry let his eyes drift off to the side as though he were thinking. “Very well?”

“No, Harry.” Merlin’s accent became broader when he was angry, making him appear more severe. Whether this was by design or not, Harry didn’t know, but it was quite effective. “I know what you’re up to, and I’m here to tell you that you’re making a big mistake with this.”

“And why is that?” Harry said, smiling at the waitress as she brought Merlin’s tea and placed it in front of him.

“Going against your own is dangerous, in fact it’s reckless.”                                                                                 

“I’m not _going against my own_. I’m just not doing _exactly_ what it is they want me to do.”

“Harry,” Merlin said knowingly. “You started this, you came up here to tempt the boy, and you’ve done that, you have him. Now you have to play your part like you always have done and see it through to the end.”

“No, Merlin, I don’t.”

“You don’t understand what you’re starting here.”

“I am fully aware.”

“Just let Them take the boy.”

Harry narrowed his eyes at Merlin, lowering his voice. “Let Them take one of _your_ own?”

“Harry, we can’t be seen to be standing idly by while you put yourself between the Devil and this boy. If you get involved, then _we_ have to get involved,” Merlin said, leaning forward across the table, pushing his mug of tea to one side with the back of his hand. “This is not what you and I are here for, Harry, we’re here to _maintain_ the balance, not go against it.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “You still believe in all that nonsense.”

Merlin shrugged, a sad look in his eyes. “The system is in place for a reason. Good and evil, Above and Below; what’s the alternative?”

Harry looked at the blue sky outside the cafe window as Merlin watched him. He thought of Eggsy’s rage like a stone fist, his kindness like an open wound. He thought of the weight of Eggsy’s hand in his own, and of Eggsy’s hot tears as they had stood in the house where he had died. He thought of the eternal black place Below, imagining Eggsy’s wings burning red and gold in the darkness forever.

“Harry, if you know then please do enlighten me.”

Harry looked back at Merlin, at the lines on his face, the glimmer of his eyes. “The boy doesn’t deserve to burn, Merlin,” he said in lieu of giving a real answer.

“Maybe not, but it is what it is.”

“You’re a fraud, Merlin,” Harry said, his voice low, hands fisted on the tabletop. “Damn someone who is utterly guiltless to eternal torment and then act as though _you’re_ the pure one because you’re maintaining a _hypothetical_ balance? Well, you must have a fantastic view of those of us that dwell in the dirt from up in your ivory fucking tower.”

“You know as well as I do that this is how the world works.” Merlin stared at Harry for a long moment, letting a carefully weighted pause hang between them before standing and shrugging his coat over his shoulders, pulling at the lapels to straighten it. “They’re going to send another messenger from Below, and soon. This one won’t be some lad you can push around, or some pencil pusher you can trick into thinking you’re still on side, this will be the real deal. If you don’t take the boy, They will.”

Harry took a sip of his tea. “Let them try,” he said darkly.

“Harry,” Merlin said slowly, looking down at him. “Do you understand what you could be starting here?”

“Holy war?” Harry said nonchalantly, half joking and half deadly serious.

Merlin gave him a withering look and sighed, then said as though in confirmation, “Holy war.”

“So be it,” Harry said.

 

That night Harry followed Eggsy through the estate of Southside, walking through the deserted streets in silence. They passed a woman walking alone at around three in the morning and Eggsy turned around and followed her until she reached the safety of her block, Harry trailing in his wake.

“You alright?” Eggsy asked at last, glancing sideways at Harry as they walked across the playing fields of King George’s Park, the little river bubbling darkly at their side.

“Tell me, Eggsy, do you ever think about Hell?” Harry said, surprised by his own reply.

Eggsy scoffed. “Not really. Should I?”

 “There are two ways to get into Hell,” Harry said, staring ahead. “The first is leading a wicked life, while the second is simply falling.”

“Ok,” Eggsy said, a questioning tone somewhere in the back of his voice.

“Do you think you led a wicked life, Eggsy?”

Harry saw Eggsy shrug out of the corner of his eye. “I dunno, probably. I done drugs and I stole shit; I fucked a dude I didn’t know one time.” Eggsy turned to look at Harry with a grin. “Is this a confession or what?”

“If you sin, if you are tempted, you are punished in Hell for all eternity,” Harry said, ignoring the glint of Eggsy’s teeth in the darkness. “If you fall...”

Eggsy looked at him as they continued to walk, the edge of the playing field drawing closer. “What are you on about, Harry? ‘If you fall’ what?”

Harry could see the black outline of a church spire at the end of the park, the iron crucifix at it's pinnacle dark against the night sky, black on black on black, as dark as it was below.

“Harry?” Eggsy said again, reaching out and closing his hand around Harry’s wrist as they walked.

“If you fall you escape the fire, but you’re punished all the same,” Harry said as they wandered into the shadow of the grey stone church. A little place made for locals; battery operated candles among the pews and crude stained-glass depictions of Mary and Jesus and saints no one really knew. Although of course Harry knew them, he knew them all by heart.

“Harry, mate, what the fuck are you on about?”

“Come here,” Harry said, ignoring Eggsy’s frustrated noises. He pulled Eggsy to the back of the church, pushing him against the grey wall and kissing him until he felt Eggsy’s cock rock up against the front of his thigh.

“Fuck, Harry, you-” Harry cupped his free hand over Eggsy’s mouth, pressing their foreheads together as he breathed into the sudden silence. Eggsy huffed against Harry’s palm, hot and wet, his eyes wide and confused. Harry said nothing as he twisted his hand, sliding his fingers into Eggsy’s wet mouth, pressing him back against the wall with one hand flat on Eggsy’s stomach. When he took his hand away he kissed Eggsy again, sliding his hand down the back of Eggsy’s jeans, his wet fingers between the cheeks of his arse.

“Fuck,” Eggsy gritted out, casting his eyes down as though in penance. “Yeah, yes.”

Saint Augustine looked down at them from his stained-glass window, casting his judgemental eye upon them as Eggsy pulled Harry in by the lapels of his jacket to kiss him once before pushing him away and turning around without a word, fingers working at his fly as Harry tugged his jeans just below the curve of his arse. Harry rested his forehead against Eggsy’s shoulder, breathing for a moment as he undid his own fly, wrapping his hand around his cock as he pushed a desperate breath out through his nose.

“Harry?”

“Hm.”

“Are you gonna-”

Harry nodded against Eggsy’s shoulder and tried not to think of burning cadavers, dissected bodies still alive and writhing, of millions of great black flies swarming across fields and fields of fallen decaying bodies. His hand burned where it gripped his cock, the smell of charred flesh sliding up between them.

“Ok,” Harry said finally. “Ok.”

Harry left blackened fingerprints in the skin of Eggsy’s back and arms and thighs and throat that night, fucking into him with a miserable desperation that made him furious at himself. The smell of Eggsy’s smoking flesh stayed with Harry for days afterwards and made him feel frantic; the sound of his own apologies echoing in his ears.

Eggsy had been quiet afterwards, his hands of Harry’s face as he kissed him, swallowing his apologies as though it were nothing. Harry felt as though they had been bathed in light for a moment, hot and blinding, and he had seen Eggsy’s wings for the first time as they had wrapped around him in the shadow of that little church, enveloping him like a child in the womb.


	8. Chapter 8

Harry was stood in the Whispering Gallery of Saint Paul’s Cathedral when Merlin came to him, looking down at the empty pews in the darkness from within the curve of the cathedral’s great white dome. The place was eerie in the night time, but Harry felt oddly comforted knowing that bodies filled the ground underneath him; the earth pitted with bone filled cavities, upon which this great house stood.

“Mr. Unwin is beyond our reach now,” Merlin said, his voice echoing in the darkness. “And yet not quite within reach of those Below.” It was almost a question, but not quite. Harry nodded anyway. “I can’t help you, Harry. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Of course, Merlin,” Harry said. “I understand.”

Merlin came to stand next to Harry, curling one hand around the gold railing Harry was leaning on and pressing the other against Harry’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” Merlin said.

“Did you know-” Harry started and then paused, narrowing his eyes as he looked at Merlin. “I never would have been able to take Eggsy to Arthur, even if I had wanted to.” Merlin said nothing so Harry continued, “He’s- Well, he’s the real deal, isn’t he?”

Merlin nodded. “Although at first I wasn’t aware of what he might be capable of.”

“No,” Harry said. “Neither was I.”

“I don’t believe his intention is to try and save you,” Merlin said.

“Good. Because he can’t, all this has done has ripped a rift between us and Them.” Harry looked at Merlin. “Me and you.”

Merlin smiled and rolled his eyes. “Harry-”

Harry groaned, leaning forward to rest his head against the cool railing. “I’m weak. I’ve been _so bloody weak_ , Merlin.”

“We all have our moments,” Merlin offered, patting Harry’s shoulder.

“You know,” Harry said, turning his head to look up at Merlin, his temple against the railing. “I had no idea how strong he was, no idea at all. I was literally shuddering on the fucking ground and he wrapped his fucking _wings_ around me, Merlin. I saw the light, for god sake.”

Merlin made a face, looking awkwardly away. “Like I said, I wasn’t aware that he had any sort of power, it’s a surprise to all of us.”

“I told you he was a good lad,” Harry said, straightening up and brushing his hands down the front of his suit jacket. “I knew there was _something_ about him.”

Merlin nodded. “And now he’s lost to us and that power is destined to fall somewhere else entirely.”

“Don’t worry,” Harry said. “I said I wouldn’t let Them take him, and I stand by that. They don’t deserve that sort of power.”

“And besides, they already have you.”

“Not anymore,” Harry said.

“Then who does have you?” Merlin pushed his hands into the pockets of his grey trousers and tipped his head back to catch Harry’s eye. Harry said nothing and they slipped into silence for a long while, together there in the darkness. Harry looked up at the monochromatic murals that surrounded them and found he was just about able to make out the shipwreck of Saint Paul, the man himself pictured in the centre of the panelled fresco, stoic in the Maltese sea.

“Saint Paul was travelling to be tried as a political rebel in Rome when his ship was wrecked off the coast of Malta, he escaped with nothing more than a snake bite and a bad case of cabin fever,” Harry said at last, his own voice echoing in the darkness.

“As I remember he was a special case,” Merlin replied, raising his eyebrows.

“And what would you call Eggsy?”

“Are you comparing Eggsy Unwin to Saint Paul? The apostle?” Merlin almost laughed.

“I’m saying he’s a special case.” Merlin pulled his shoulders up as though he were thinking of an argument, but let them fall without saying a word. “He is unique,” Harry continued. “At least unique within the last few hundred years. He is good, powerfully so, and could do great things.”

“He’s disenfranchised, that’s what happens to the kids these days,” Merlin interrupted. “He’s not wholly anything.”

“No, but imagine if a storm could save him from ever having to be tried down Below, some chance disaster.” Harry’s eyes were suddenly wide and innocent, a look that Merlin had come to associate with some oncoming devilry. “Imagine if he could just slip away for a little while, given the chance to become whatever it is that he is meant to become.”

“You imagine there is a place somewhere on this earth that he can just ‘slip away’ to without being found by your lot? Or _my_ lot for that matter,” Merlin said with a shake of his head.

“Paul just hid in cave for a while and he was fine.”

“Harry-”

“I can protect him,” Harry said, holding up his hands. “If we can just put off the inevitable, find a way to squirrel him away for a bit, let him discover his own power-”

“You’d be alone, Harry, no Above and no Below to back either of you up.”

“Merlin, I’m one of the most powerful demons ever to walk the earth, I’m my own backup. And besides,” Harry said with a slow grin, “We already have you.”

Merlin looked incredulously at Harry, noticing out of the corner of his eye that a little square of morning light had begun to inch across the cathedral floor below. “Harry-”

“It would require the very slightest amount of deception on your part, I assure you.”

“Harry, I already said-”

“For the greater good.”

“That’s not a phrase I feel comfortable with-”

“Merlin.” Harry hit his hand against the gold railing at his side, making a long, low ringing noise echo around them. “For me, then. And for the boy. For the good that he could do. All you would have to do is divert attention elsewhere, you wouldn’t need to cover for us, or hide us. I’m not looking for sanctuary, Merlin, I’m looking for a distraction.”

“And what about your lot?”

Harry grinned, the morning light creeping down the curve of the domed ceiling behind him, a light to guide the way. “I’ll deal with my lot.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank y'all for all your comments and kudos on this piece of trash! I LOVE YOU ALL.

Harry took Eggsy back to Southwark Park, where eons ago Harry had watched him bury a homeless man’s dead dog in the dry earth of the rose bed there.

“Well,” Eggsy said mockingly. “This is nice.”

“I thought you liked Southwark?” Harry said, a slight taunting lilt to his voice.

“Oh yes, great memories.” Eggsy tilted his head back and looked at Harry. “So what are you up to then?”

“You’re always so suspicious.”

“You come from _Hell_ , Harry.”

Harry allowed himself a slow grin before making his way to the little bench they had sat on all those months ago, patting the space next to him for Eggsy to join him. “Have you ever heard of the shipwreck of Saint Paul?”

Eggsy grimaced. “Oh, Harry, please not another Bible story,” he whined. “I got enough of that in me own time, I don’t need you banging on about it as well.”

“Fine. We have to go away for a while,” Harry said bluntly.

“Cool, well, I can’t actually leave London, so you’ll have to send me a postcard-”

Harry frowned, and as he did the sky darkened slightly around them, the sound of Southwark’s traffic beyond the edge of the park dulled. “Eggsy, you’re being tedious.”

“Sorry, Harry, sorry,” Eggsy held up his hands and smiled as the sound of the traffic rushed back. Eggsy knew it was a gimmick, Harry could tell, but it made Eggsy smile and roll his eyes, so Harry would roll it out whenever he had the chance. Drawing the night about them, the echoes of screams in their ears, a taste of what Hell on earth would be like whenever they argued about inane things; Cadbury’s milk chocolate versus Galaxy Caramel, The Rolling Stones versus _Tinie Tempah_ ,  whether Coronation Street was _actually_ better than Eastenders.

“You and I-” Harry paused. “We have created something of a moral quandary for the powers that be.”

“Uh huh?” Eggsy stared at Harry, brows furrowed. “You talking about Merlin?”

“Bigger than Merlin.”

“Right.”

“They’re going to come after us,” Harry said, looking away. “Well, They’re going to come after you, and by extension-”

“You an’all.”

“Yes, Eggsy.” Harry turned to look at Eggsy, young and open and good, sat with his knees wide on the little bench, hands clasped together over his belly. “My superiors aren’t fully aware of what the situation is at the moment, but they will be very soon.”

“Why do they want me down there so bad?” Eggsy jutted his jaw to one side grumpily, pushing his hands into the front pocket of his sweater. “I ain’t that great.”

Harry snorted. “You have a great deal of potential, Eggsy.”

Eggsy made a considered face and smiled, inclining his head towards Harry. “They want me to be the next Harry Hart, ay? A plague upon the earth, but like, not as well dressed?”

“At first they just wanted you to burn, but now they want you to hold the torch.”

Eggsy nodded. “And if I said no?”

“Then you’d definitely burn.”

 “So we have to go away for a while?”

“We’ll have all of Heaven and Hell at our heels, but yes, we need to go away for a while.”

“You can’t hide from the Devil, and you can’t hide from God.”

Harry nodded. “But we have an inside man.”

Eggsy laughed out loud at that, a surprisingly high bark of laughter. “Merlin?”

Harry grinned. “The very same.”

“Well, let’s push off then, shall we? We could get a little static caravan, or live in a cave somewhere.”

“So you _do_ know of the shipwreck of Saint Paul-”

“Harry, I’m an angel, of course I know. That’s like, my job.” They sat in silence for a moment, looking out over the surface of the little pond together, across the grave of the dog Eggsy had buried, until Eggsy sighed and said, “So what are we gonna do?”

“We wait for my superiors to send a messenger, and then I inform him of the situation.”

Eggsy nodded. “Ok, Harry.”

 

When the final messenger intercepted Harry in the middle of Camden High Street Harry had greeted him with a smile and a clap on the shoulder, before slipping a 9mm from the holster at his side and shooting the man in both his kneecaps. No one noticed of course, they flowed around the man screaming on the pavement like a river around a rock. Harry stood over him and waited for him to stop screaming.

“You fuck!” the man shouted, his fingers spreading over his ruined knees. “You fucking _traitor_.”

Harry leant down, his hands resting on his thighs as he crouched in front of Arthur’s last messenger. “I have someone I’d like you to meet,” Harry said. “Before you go back down Below.”

 

Eggsy had been anxious at first, shaking his head and swearing when Harry had told him he was holding one of Arthur’s messengers hostage in an abandoned industrial building in Kentish Town.  His unease turned to outright fear when Harry ushered him into the cavernous space of the warehouse and showed him the broken thing tied to a chair in the centre of the room like a snitch from a Tarantino Movie.

“Harry, what the fuck? What the _fuck_?”

“I wanted you to meet him, before I sent him back.”

Eggsy screwed up his face and pushed the word from his mouth as though he were in pain, “Why!?”

“I want you to see what I am.”

“I know what you are, Harry, I know-”

Harry grabbed two handfuls of Eggsy’s sweater in his fists and shook him. “You don’t even know what _you_ are; you don’t even know what you yourself are capable of, let alone me.”

“Harry, why are you doing this?”

Harry let Eggsy go and stepped back, placing his long fingers over his own mouth as he spoke. “As soon as Arthur knows that I’ve been compromised there is no going back for me, and no going back for you. I want you to understand, to _see_ , what that means.”

Eggsy looked over Harry’s shoulder at the man tied to the chair; a pathetic bloodied creature in the middle of the concrete floor. He nodded, jittery and pale. “Are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure this is what you want?” he said, his voice echoing dully between the wooden walls of the empty warehouse. Harry nodded, taking a step back, but Eggsy reached for him, clutching at his shirt sleeves and pulling him forward. “Harry, please, you don’t have to, you shouldn’t.” Harry let himself be pulled until they were pressed chest to chest. He wrapped a hand around the back of Eggsy’s neck and pulled him up for a kiss, his mouth open. “Harry, please,” Eggsy muttered again against his mouth, his hands trembling against Harry’s body.

“Eggsy.” Harry smoothed a hand through Eggsy’s hair, longer and lighter than it had been when they first met. “The storm is frightful, but come the morning the sea will be calm, the sky will be blue.” He smiled. “The dawn chases the dark night away.”

Eggsy said nothing, but his fingers slowly uncurled from where he had fisted them in the front of Harry’s stained shirt, his shoulders slumping as he watched Harry turn back to the man in the chair.

Harry walked across the room until he was standing over the man, then in a single motion Harry knelt between his thighs and sunk his fingers into the soft flesh of the man’s sides, burning through his body like hot pokers. The man did not scream, but he shook violently, trembling, his teeth cracking as he clenched them. “ _Fuck_ ,” he gritted out, long and low.

Harry leaned forward, his voice calm and measured as he spoke. “Be sure to send my regards when you get back down there, won’t you.” It wasn’t a question, but an order, sibilant and deadly. Harry could practically _feel_ Eggsy’s suppressed shudder from the corner of the room at the deadly press of his voice.

He sunk his fingers deeper into the man’s sides, anchoring him as he shook, a low groan building in the back of his throat as Harry began to tear his burning hands upwards, through the man’s torso, reaching up under his ribcage and closing his hands around his lungs, crushing them. Slick black chunks of flesh fall away in charred ruins, a red wet mess dripping onto the floor. The man’s groan welled into a scream, then a punctured breath, and then silence.

_Holy war_ , Merlin has said. Harry pulled his hands from the man’s dead body with two sickly sucking pops, a slew of innards plopping onto the floor at his feet. _Yes_ , thought Harry. _Let’s fucking have at it._


	10. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so this is _actually_ the end now. This epilogue was gonna focus on epic demon!Harry, but ended up being an excuse to write a road trip movie with further self-indulgence (see: shirtless Eggsy playing the violin).
> 
> Please ignore this chapter if you prefer the other ending :D
> 
> And thank you again for all your comments and kudos and love, I AM HUMBLED.

Evidently there was no where on earth that could hide them from the Devil, and no where that could hide them from God. They travelled across Europe and into the Middle East, up into the vast nothing of Russia’s cold north, down through China and Malaysia and into Australia. They moved on whenever Merlin called them and gave them a nudge, a disgruntled, “They’re on to you,” or a tired, “Just get a move on, Harry,” over the phone whenever he got word that they were in danger of being caught.

There were occasions when they _did_ get caught, times when Harry would saunter out to meet the agents of Hell and dispatch them in a haze of blood and gore, leaving only smouldering remains behind. Harry would not let Eggsy take a life, not even that of a demon; so instead Eggsy went about his quiet good deeds like a character from an Enid Blyton book, growing ever more confident in his abilities. Harry insisted that he read widely, offering him philosophy books, scientific texts, classic poetry, post-modern literature, tabloids and take-away menus. They sat together and watched opera and ballet and cookery shows and documentaries, films about spies and manic depressives and dinosaurs and space travel. In between times Eggsy learned to play the violin, which he did in his gaudy tracksuits, chin tucked up against the rest as he played, mouth open gently in concentration.

“Harry, listen,” he called one day as they approached their fifth Christmas together. Harry was in the kitchen of their rented LA apartment, the flashing lights of a neon sign outside of the window illuminating the back of his head in red and yellow and green. “Harry!”

“Hm.” Harry turned, shirtsleeves rolled up around his elbows, a partially peeled potato in his wet hands.

“Listen to what I can do,” Eggsy said. He shook his shoulders a little, loosening them, repositioned his chin and flexed his fingers. He cast his eyes down at the sheet music on the stand in front of him and began to play the first gentle notes of _The Lark Ascending_.

Harry watched Eggsy’s face as he played, eyes skittering across the notes in front of him, his mouth closing gently between beats to steady his breathing. Eggsy’s feet were planted confidently, red socks against the cheap beige carpet, but his body swayed slightly with the music, which swelled and then died.

“Fuck,” Eggsy said, dropping the violin to his side. “I always fuck that bit up.” He reached out towards the book of sheet music and began to flick through the pages as Harry walked across the living room towards him, wet potato dripping into the carpet.

“I think you sounded marvellous, Eggsy,” he said, smiling, placing a cold, wet hand against Eggsy’s face.

“Harry!” Eggsy exclaimed, but did not move away, just made a face and let himself be kissed.

“You just have to keep practicing,” Harry said as he pulled away. “You’ll get there.”

“Hm,” Eggsy said.

 

After LA they travelled north into Canada, crossing the border like Jedi; “These are not the celestial beings you are looking for.”

“Very clever, Eggsy,” Harry had said with a shake of his head.

“That’s me taking advantage that is,” Eggsy said, rolling up the car window after he had thanked the man at border control. “That’s your bad influence.”

“If you had succumbed to my bad influence you would have put a hole in his head and taken his wallet,” Harry said, warming his hands around a takeaway cup of coffee. He looked across at Eggsy, hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, eyes trained on the dark road ahead of them.

They drove for a couple of hours until they reached a little motel that looked like an alpine cabin, fat white lights hanging from the guttering. They rented a room with two single beds and pushed them together, then ended up fucking in the bathroom. Eggsy came with his knees against the white tile floor, while Harry knelt in front of him with one hand on Eggsy’s cock and the other around his throat. Afterwards Harry fucked him up against the bathroom counter, eyes cast down between their bodies so that he could watch the shift of Eggsy’s hard muscles under him. He pressed his palms against Eggsy’s scapulas, imagining his wings surging up and out through his white skin.

The next morning they drove up Highway 546 towards Abbotsford and Mission, then along the Lougheed to Dewdney and Deroche. Eggsy slept for a long while, slumped against the inside of the car door with his head against Harry’s rolled up jacket, breathing white mist onto the window as Harry drove.

They couldn’t run forever, Harry knew that. But Eggsy needed his miracle, some great act that might save him from Hell and redeem him in the eyes of the Lord. Harry watched Eggsy as he slept and knew that his miracle _would_ come, just as it had for Aquinas and Galgani and Bosco, for Paul and Mark and Augustine. Until that time they would run while they could, waiting out the darkness.

“Harry?” Eggsy shifted in his sleep, his eyes opening a fraction before closing again. Harry said nothing.

 

Eggsy mastered _The Lark Ascending_ that same week, performing it with a wide grin, waiting for Harry to gather him up afterwards and tell him what a good job he had done. Harry kissed the smug grin from his lips and then kept on kissing him until Eggsy was moaning against him, sucking in air like a man drowning.

“Let’s go on a road trip,” Harry said breathlessly. “South America.”

Eggsy grunted, pushing his face into Harry’s shoulder before he pulled his lips up the side of Harry’s neck, leaving muggy kisses against his skin. “Whatever you want, Harry. Whatever you reckon,” Eggsy said, biting down.

 

They drove the entire west coast of South America that spring, through Columbia and Ecuador and Peru, down into the heat of Chile. They drove down Ruta 1 along the Chilean coast and Harry felt as though he might as well have been on the moon. After that they drove through Argentina and up into Paraguay, where Harry killed three men after they pulled a gun on him and asked for his phone and his shoes, their jittery leader letting off a single round that clipped the side of Harry’s face, chipping his glasses and covering his favourite suit jacket in his own blood.

“Overkill, Harry,” Eggsy had said when he found out afterwards. “Total overkill.”

South America lost its charm after that, so they made the decision together to return to Europe for the hot summer, renting a little house just north of Saint-Julian in southern France, the green earth wide and rich around them.

Of all the places they had lived, that was Harry favourite; their little cottage in the countryside. Eggsy played violin in the garden, his pale body bared to the sun. He gained appalling tan lines low on his hips and just above his knees, skin freckled brown and bone white. Harry decided to learn how electronics worked and spent his days taking apart televisions and drills and mobile phones, metal pieces spread out before him in his workshop like grey constellations.

“I’ll be sad to leave here,” Eggsy said one day as he sat and watched Harry work, the quiet tick-tick-tick of a repaired clock thrumming like a gentle heart between them.

Harry nodded, his eyes trained on the little watch cogs in front of him as he shifted them into place with a pair of tweezers.

“I know we’ll have to though,” Eggsy continued, despite the lack of a response. “I know that we gotta get on at some point.”

Harry looked up, eyebrows raised. “Is there something you want to talk about?”

Eggsy looked down at the partially constructed watch, at the cogs waiting to be fitted into place. Then he shrugged and looked at Harry. “What are we doing, Harry?” he said.

_Waiting_ , Harry thought to himself. _We’re waiting for you._

 

A month later Merlin contacted them and told them that it was time to move on, that agents from Below were on their way, the fires of Hell were licking at their heels, blar blar blar.

“No need to be sarcastic, Merlin,” Harry said irritably down the phone.

“Apologies, Harry,” Merlin replied, his voice tinny. “It’s just that I assumed this would be a temporary mission, and yet here we are almost five years later.”

“I don’t want to push him, Merlin,” Harry said, his voice low. He looked over his shoulder to make sure that he was alone before continuing. “His powers are growing, but an appropriate situation to trial them has not yet presented itself.”

“Maybe you need to create an appropriate situation.”

“That would be manipulation, Merlin.”

“Are you a demon or not? That’s your prerogative.”

Harry made a face, then realised that Merlin couldn’t see his displeasure so he hung up the phone instead.

 

They drove down from Saint-Julien to Tavernes and Cabasse, until they joined Route E80 with the racing Monday morning traffic. The summer was drawing to a close and the trees that ran alongside the busy motorway were already starting to turn.

Eggsy sat silently, staring out of the window at the passing cars with his chin on his fist. Harry looked at him out of the corner of his eye and thought of what Merlin had said. He was right, of course, he almost always was; they couldn’t wait for Eggsy’s miracle forever, and besides, why would they want to? Harry thought of Eggsy’s bare feet against the grass, of his chin tucked up against his violin, he thought of the tanned expanse of Eggsy’s back and of the wings that were concealed there.

Maybe they didn’t need to wait for a miracle at all, maybe that was for helpless chumps like old Saint Paul, maybe they could just make their own miracle.

Harry turned to look at Eggsy, catching his eye and smiling. He thought of all their moments together, the good and the bad and a litany of memories that lay somewhere in between.

_Let’s take it then_ , Harry thought to himself. He cast Eggsy another look before he wrenched the steering wheel to the right, inertia throwing their bodies sideways. The car careened across the road with a screech of tires before it started to flip. Eggsy flung his arms wide, his mouth open in a shout. Harry watched as an articulated lorry coming in the opposite direction started to swerve, as commuters in their little cars buzzed around it like worker bees, attempting to save themselves from the oncoming crash.

As he watched, time slowed to a single pulsing point, at the centre of which only Harry and Eggsy seemed to exist. In the silence that followed Harry looked across at Eggsy, whose arms were thrown out wide, one hand pressed against the passenger side window and the other flat against the windscreen.

“Eggsy.” Harry reached into the space between them, conscious of the slow shift of the car around them as they gently twisted towards the chaos of the oncoming traffic. He closed his hand around Eggsy’s forearm and squeezed hard, watching the flesh turn white around his fingers. “It’s time now. The waiting’s over.”

Eggsy looked away, towards the oncoming lorry that was now jack-knifing in slow motion across the motorway. He jutted out his jaw and nodded until Harry took his hand away. Harry was transfixed as Eggsy’s body became weightless, a transition from the physical to the celestial that was as gentle as falling leaves in the autumn. He moved through the body of the car like a ghost, his great white wings unfolding like the billowing sails of a ship.

Harry watched Eggsy take his miracle that day, with a fury that he might once have used to take Dean’s life. He took it hand by shaking hand, saving every life that may have been lost as a result of Harry’s impulse.

_It’s time now, Eggsy_.

Afterwards Harry watched Eggsy picking his way through the wreckage along the motorway and imagined Saint Paul aboard the deck of his ship as it was dashed against the rocks.

Eggsy was the dawn, he thought, and he chased the dark night away.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a questionable fic, I dunno.
> 
> Title from Good Omens.
> 
> I am on [tumblr](http://agent-carnter.tumblr.com).


End file.
